Essays on Scandinavian Literature | Page 8

and strained
historical verisimilitude by veiled allusions to contemporaneous
conditions. Greatly superior is his next drama, "Sigurd Slembe"[4]
(1862).
[4] An English version of "Sigurd Slembe" has been published by
William Morton Payne (Boston, 1888).
The story of the brave and able pretender, Sigurd Slembe, in his
struggle with the vain and mean-spirited king, Harold Gille, is the
theme of the dramatic trilogy. Björnson attempts to give the spiritual
development of Sigurd from the moment he becomes acquainted with
his royal birth until his final destruction. From a frank and generous
youth, who is confident that he is born for something great, he is driven
by the treachery, cruelty, and deceit of his brother, the king, into the
position of a desperate outlaw and guerilla. The very first scene, in the
church of St. Olaf, where the boy confides to the saint, in a tone of
bonne camaraderie, his joy at having conquered, in wrestling, the
greatest champion in the land, gives one the key-note to his character:

"Now only listen to me, saintly Olaf! To-day I whipped young Beintein!
Beintein was The strongest man in Norway. Now am I! Now I can walk
from Lindesnäs and on, Up to the northern boundary of the snow, For
no one step aside or lift my hat. There where I am, no man hath leave to
fight, To make a tumult, threaten, or to swear-- Peace everywhere! And
he who wrong hath suffered Shall justice find, until the laws shall sing.
And as before the great have whipped the small, So will I help the
small to whip the great. Now I can offer counsel at the Thing, Now to
the king's board I can boldly walk And sit beside him, saying 'Here am
I!'"
The exultation in victory which speaks in every line of this opening
monologue marks the man who, in spite of the obscurity of his origin,
feels his right to be first, and who, in this victory, celebrates the
attainment of his birthright. Equally luminous by way of
characterization is his exclamation to St. Olaf when he hears that he is
King Magnus Barefoot's son:
"Then we are kinsmen, Olaf, you and I!"
According to Norwegian law at that time, every son of a king was
entitled to his share of the kingdom, and Sigurd's first impulse is to go
straight to Harold Gille and demand his right. His friend Koll
Saebjörnson persuades him, however, to abandon this hopeless
adventure, and gives him a ship with which he sails to the Orient, takes
part in many wars, and gains experience and martial renown.
The second part of the trilogy deals with Sigurd's sojourn at the
Orkneys, where he interferes in the quarrel between the Earls Harold
and Paul. The atmosphere of suspicion, insecurity, and gloom which
hangs like a portentous cloud over these scenes is the very same which
blows toward us from the pages of the sagas. Björnson has gazed
deeply into the heart of Northern paganism, and has here reproduced
the heroic anarchy which was a necessary result of the code permitting
the individual to avenge his own wrongs. The two awful women, Helga
and Frakark, the mother and the aunt of the earls, are types which are
constantly met with in the saga. It is a long-recognized fact that women,
under lawless conditions, develop the wildest extremes of ambition,

avarice, and blood-thirstiness, and taunt the men with their weak
scruples. These two furies of the Orkneys plot murder with an infernal
coolness, which makes Lady Macbeth a kind-hearted woman by
comparison. They recognize in Sigurd a man born for leadership;
determine to use him for the furtherance of their plans, and to get rid of
him, by fair means or foul, when he shall have accomplished his task.
But Sigurd is too experienced a chieftain to walk into this trap. While
appearing to acquiesce, he plays for stakes of his own, but in the end
abandons all in disgust at the death of Earl Harold, who intentionally
puts on the poisoned shirt, prepared for his brother. There is no great
and monumental scene in this part which engraves itself deeply upon
the memory. The love scenes with Audhild, the young cousin of the
earls, are incidental and episodical, and exert no considerable influence
either upon Sigurd's character or upon the development of the intrigue.
Historically they are well and realistically conceived; but dramatically
they are not strong. Another criticism, which has already been made by
the Danish critic, Georg Brandes, refers to an offence against this very
historical sense which is usually so vivid in Björnson. When Frakark,
the Lady Macbeth of the play, remarks, "I am far from feeling sure of
the individual mortality so much preached of; but there is an
immortality of which I